Wealthy peasants and bountiful ingredients in an imagined 1970s Italy

It's about time for something wonderful, right? Right?! I can't do much about the real world, but I can show you Wonderful Ways to Prepare Italian Food (Jo Ann Shirley, 1978).

I kind of love the nearly 3-D style of the cover, with the bowl of cooked farfalle sitting on top of a mound of uncooked farfalle.

Most of the recipes are actually not too terrible sounding-- just sometimes not very authentic considering the questionable availability of various ingredients in 1970s groceries. (Yes, "risotto" is made with long grain rice in this book, for example.)

I did like the occasional recipe that put a spin on a common '70s dinner. This meat loaf recipe might shake up the usual meat loaf in a dinner rotation.

Not only is this a rolled meat loaf, but the stuffing isn't just the cubed-bread dressing I expected. It's a different meal entirely-- ham and cheese with mashed potatoes! 

My favorite entries might be the ones that confused me, though. I was not at all surprised to see a minestrone recipe-- pretty much every Italian cookbook I ever see has at least one--

--but then I was a bit confused by the Peasant Minestrone recipe that followed.

The original recipe was mostly what I expected: kidney beans cooked with tomatoes and other vegetables, then finished with a starchy component (rice, in this case, though I usually expect a small pasta). The peasant version is inexplicably more expensive than the standard, subbing two kinds of meat (beef ribs and Italian sausage) for the dried beans and adding an extravagant sprinkling of Parmesan at the end. Are the peasants somehow richer than everyone else? I was a bit mystified.

The biggest mystery of all, however, might have been this one.

You might wonder what is so odd about steak with brandy and Marsala. Meat with wine is a pretty common combination. But look at the sauce! This recipe for four people calls for TWO FULL POUNDS of liver paté! Who wants a HALF-POUND of paté on top of a steak? And the recipe title doesn't even mention paté, as if it is only a minor component of this recipe.

I guess maybe the diners were supposed to eat only a little sauce and save some for other dishes? Who knows? All I know is that I was grateful for this book's little mysteries.